November 22, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - Watching the
terrible events unfolding in Paris, I have a helpless sense of
deja vu. It reminds me of the movie, Groundhog Day,
only much more deadly and depressing. It feels like we have been
here so many times before: the same anguished images, the same
suffering, the same questions and sense of disbelief. Most
depressingly, listening to the rhetoric coming from Western
leaders, I can’t see any way we can avoid experiencing the same
day again – whether in a few months or years time.

As I explained in my book Writing the War
on Terrorism about the language of counterterrorism, when
the 11 September 2001 attacks occurred, President Bush said that
they were “an act of war”. This was a key rhetorical move and it
led the US to launch the global war on terrorism which has
caused so much suffering, violence and counter-violence. Today
in Paris, exactly like all those years ago, French President
Hollande said, the attack was “an act of war committed by a
terrorist army”, and “faced with war, the country must take
appropriate action”. Just like President Bush fourteen years
ago, he similarly signalled his resolve: “we are going to fight
and our fight will be merciless.” Former president Nicolas
Sarkozy added to the war rhetoric: “The war we must wage should
be total.”

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush said
that the attacks were an attack on freedom and the civilised
world. Today, President Obama said: “this is an attack not just
on Paris, not just on the people of France, but an attack on all
humanity and the universal values we share.” As Bush did so many
years ago invoking the mythology of the Western frontier, Obama
said that America will do “whatever it takes to bring these
terrorists to justice”.

After the attacks back in 2001, we heard the
Bush administration claim that al Qaeda represented an
anti-modern form of totalitarianism. Following the same script,
today US Secretary of State John Kerry said “we are witnessing a
kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same time.” And
similar to George Bush’s frequent invocation of the “evil” of
terrorism and terrorist “evildoers”, Australian Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull described yesterday’s attacks as “the work of
the devil”.

As I and many others have argued, this kind of
rhetoric is not without consequence; it functions to shape and
structure the response which will inevitably come. It provides a
powerful cognitive frame for thinking about the threat of
political violence and how to respond. If the attacks are viewed
and discussed as an act of “war”, for example, as opposed to a
terrible “crime”, a military response then becomes the logical
default option. And if the terrorists are conceived of as “evil”
or “devils”, or even as “fascists” and “medieval”, then there is
no place for anything except policies of eradication: there can
be no compromise with “evil”.

After 9/11, presidential rhetoric about the
terrorist attacks laid the foundation for a massive
military-based “war on terrorism” which involved two major wars
costing three trillion dollars and over a million lives,
military strikes and a drone killing programme on at least three
other countries, a global rendition and torture programme,
profiling and mass surveillance, restrictions of human rights,
the militarisation of the police, and many other restrictive
measures in daily life. In turn, all this activity has
contributed to violent instability across the Middle East,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa, the mass movement
of refugees, the rise of Islamophobia, and much else besides.
Arguably, in a self-fulfilling prophesy, or what is called
“blowback” by the security services, it helped to create at
least five new al Qaeda groups, and numerous other militant
affiliates. In Iraq, it led directly to the rise of al Qaeda in
Iraq which then morphed into ISIS, and the merger of the Syrian
and Iraq civil wars. In response, the West has initiated a
renewed military campaign to bomb areas of Syria and Iraq.

In other words, on the rhetorial basis of the
“war” against “evil” frame, the West helped to create and
sustain a deeply embedded cycle of violence. The Paris attacks,
as well as the Beirut attack a few hours earlier and the killing
of “Jihadi John”, are the latest acts in this by now quite
intractable cycle of violence. The language of Western leaders,
especially the words of the French leadership today, strongly
suggest that we remain trapped in our own “war on terrorism”
Groundhog Day. I think it’s safe to say that Western
leaders will respond with more bombing of the Middle East, more
military force, more war, more responding to terrorism with even
greater violence and repression. After all, once the words are
spoken, there is no choice but to eradicate “evil”.

This means that there will be future days like
today, both in Western countries and in the countries of the
Middle East rhetorically linked to terrorism. We will try and
kill them with our military, and they will try and kill us with
their militants. Of course, in Groundhog Day, Bill
Murray eventually escapes his fate by learning from his mistakes
and gaining a stronger sense of humanity. The message of the
movie is that there is always hope that people can change and
break the negative cycles of their actions. Today, there is no
evidence that our leaders are ready to learn from their mistakes
over fourteen years of the war on terror, and maybe it is not
the day to insist they do. Let’s grieve first, and then consider
carefully whether we want to keep on the same path. The problem
is that the words our leaders speak today will shape the
reflections and actions they choose in the coming days, and
today, I can’t see anything else to come except more
Groundhog Day.

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